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This section was my workspace for philosophy essays between July 2006 and April 2008.
I call this "Prehistoric Kilroy" because it gave me practice for more
disciplined essays in Kilroy Cafe.Also see my philophical blog and Twitter feed.

Issue #84,
4/27/2007

The Dilemma of Dependence

By Glenn CampbellFamily Court Philosopher

The Dilemma of Dependence is a fundamental and recurring
problem of human relationships. Once we become involved in
someone's life, they may become dependent on us, and we may
feel an emotional sense of obligation to them. This "web of
dependence" may make it difficult for us to disengage from
them even when the relationship is not the best for
ourselves, for them or for the mission we are both pursuing.

A simple case is the hiring and firing of employees. When
selecting a new employee from a field of applicants, there
is nothing to prevent us from choosing the best objective
candidate. Since we have little emotional involvement with
any one candidate, we can presumably make the decision
dispassionately based only on their qualifications and
personality traits.

Once we have hired someone, however, the burden tends to
shift. When we have worked with this person for a while,
they essentially become a member of our family, and we feel
a natural obligation not to hurt them. As a result, we tend
not to fire them unless we have "cause" — that is,
when they have done something significantly and
unquestionably wrong. We no longer demand that they live up
to the higher expectations we had when we first hired them.

In large organizations, this tendency is often codified in a
union contract. It is easy enough to hire someone, but
firing a mediocre worker who belongs to the union can be
extremely difficult. It can involve many warnings and second
chances and lots of paperwork. The employer essentially has
to prove that the employee isn't doing their job rather than
the employee showing that they continue to be better than
all the other candidates.

Where there is no union, then natural human loyalty tends to
do the same thing. When an employee is "nice" and "is doing
their best" and we learn that they are struggling to feed
six children, we may be willing to accept a lot of
mediocrity and unintentional incompetence before we fire
them. The effects are the same as the union: We have to
document some glaring defects and perhaps be facing an
external crisis of our own before we are willing to make the
hard choices.

Romantic relationships often turn out the same way. We can
be very selective on the front end, but once we have engaged
with someone emotionally, it can be extraordinarily
difficult to disengage, even when we know that the
relationship isn't the best for us or them. We need to have
substantial grounds before we deliberately disengage, and
absent this, we are likely to stick with the same dull
relationship year after year.

There are plenty of valid reasons to hold onto a longtime
employee or romantic partner. With all their years of
experience, they may know the job (and you) better than
anyone else and thus may truly be the best candidate year
after year. If you had the chance to hire them again,
without any obligations, you very well might do so.

Years of service, however, don't always guarantee the best
employee. There are many psychological factors that can
confound the benefits of experience. After working for you
for a while and feeling secure in his position, the employee
is likely to revert to his natural personality, which may
not have been evident in the initial interview. Ideally,
the relationship is an equal partnership where you each
receive as much as you give, but over time the burdens can
easily shift to one side, with one person doing most of the
giving and the other doing most of the taking.

This isn't usually a deliberate decision, and it may not be
anyone's "fault," but over time many close relationships
degenerate into a parent-child dynamic, with one person
becoming caregiver and the other requiring care. This is
fine for real children, who will presumably grow out of it,
but it is not a wholesome relationship for adults.

An ideal adult relationship is one of equal benefit —
a mutual give-and-take that substantially improves the lives
of both parties. In practice, however, this balance is
difficult to maintain, especially when each partner has no
discretion to pull away. Any inequality tends to get worse
with time, and eventually obligation may be keeping you
together more than reward.

These dependencies can sneak up on you. On the day you got
married or hired your employee, it certainly seemed like
things would be equal, but that assumption was based mostly
on hypothesis, not actual data. Unfortunately, the
longitudinal data in any social system doesn't always match
the initial theory.

With experience, you may begin to see defects that you
weren't aware of before the hiring. "No problem," you say.
"I can work with that." You make accommodations, and then
you make more accommodations, and eventually you are
admitting to your therapist that this isn't the relationship
you thought it would be. But will you take action?
Probably not. Given your emotional investments, not to
mention your financial ones, things must usually deteriorate
even further before you are pushed into action.

You may say of your marriage partner, "Sure he's an
alcoholic, but I understand why. He had a terrible
childhood. He would be devastated without me. If I left
him, he would probably drink even worse. When we got
married, I said, 'For better or worse,' and 'Til death do
you part,' and I intend to fulfill my obligations. Whatever
problems he has, I can work with them. This isn't about me;
the important thing is the health of our whole family."

Indeed, that is the most important issue: the health of the
whole system. This requires a wider and longer view than
ones emotional obligation to a single person.

In every human relationship, there is usually a bigger issue
at stake than the relationship itself. You have joined with
this person to pursue some higher goal, and in the end this
mission must take priority.

In the case of employees, you are trying to get a job done.
You are trying to produce a product or provide a service.
This is the whole reason you are here. It is where the
money comes from that allows you to hire anyone at all.
Anything you may feel about one employee—positively or
negatively—can't stand in the way of the job you have
been given to do. If you don't believe in that job, then get
out! If you do believe in it, then you have to give it
priority over your perceived emotional obligations to
individual players.

Romantic relationships also have purpose apart from just
"love." Love alone doesn't carry you very far. A romantic
relationship, in the long term, is primarily a tool of
growth. If you are experiencing some kind of ongoing
personal development that you would have not have had
otherwise, then the relationship is probably working. If the
relationship is static and going nowhere, then it is merely
an obligation. Being "in love" is nice, but it isn't the
main mission. There is also some product that you have to
get out of it — at least a better you than when you
went in.

Apart from this one person, there are also other people in
your world who depend on you. This could include your other
employees, your clients, your children and the potential
partners and employees who you have had exclude to support
this one. Your obligation to all of them is as great or
greater than your obligation to the one employee.

If you have ten talented employees and one mediocre one,
then you are inevitably damaging the ten by catering to the
one. You are lowering your standards and turning resources
away from support of the ten. Likewise, if you remain
involved in a dysfunctional romantic relationship, it is not
just you and them who are being hurt. There are also all
your other friends and family members who are going to
suffer whenever you do because they, too, are part of your
"system."

This system includes your own productivity. You have an
obligation, above all, to your own future. For the good of
humanity, you need to become the most productive and
effective instrument you can be. You need to be able to
pursue your mission to the best of your ability. You may not
know now what that mission will be, but it certainly doesn't
involve dumping your resources down a black hole.

The Dilemma of Dependence is one of the most difficult
challenges of life. There are no easy answers, and there
are plenty of risks no matter what you choose. It's easy
enough to fall in love or hire an employee. It is never easy
to fire someone or get a divorce.

The one thing you shouldn't do is stick your head in the sand.
If you do, then years are going to pass with little change.
When you take your head out of the sand, the problem will
still be there, but you will have lost all those years in
the interim.

—G.C.

Reader Comments

“i found it boaring”
— 11/19/07 (rating=1)

“meh, i was looking for a specific thing but twas ok”
—a person 6/24/09 (rating=2)